WASHINGTON — For people who support the humane treatment of animals, including those that end up on America’s dinner plates, passage this week of the farm bill would be a gift befitting the season — and a grand bipartisan gesture to close out the year.

FLORENCE, Italy — It was here in 1614 that Tommaso Caccini preached a sermon in the church of Santa Maria Novella denouncing Galileo and other scientists who held the heretical view that the Earth circles the sun. This was one of the main triggers that brought Galileo to the attention of the Inquisition.

Obama-era federal guidelines for responding to sexual harassment and assault on college and K-12 campuses clearly needed an update, but the policy proposed this month by U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos should not be adopted as drafted.

For the majority of citizens of Hawaii County malama aina is not just an empty slogan, but a high ideal and a way of life. We have voted with both our ballots and our pocketbooks to protect in perpetuity the most beautiful and sacred lands of Hawaii nei.

WASHINGTON — A word can be worth a thousand pictures. In the movie “Gosnell: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer,” the mild word “snip” describes what the camera, demonstrating the eloquence of reticence, does not show in gory detail: Kermit Gosnell’s use of scissors to cut the spinal cords of hundreds of babies that survived his late-term abortion procedures.